Tea at Trianon: Baritones Begone

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Baritones Begone

Dr. Anthony Esolen for The Catholic Thing:

What did a Greek monk have in common with the itinerant Methodist, traveling across the ocean to evangelize his cousins in the New World? What did the Roman poet Venantius Fortunatus (The Royal Banners Forward Go) have in common with Chesterton, that bluff journalist and warrior of wit and pen?

They were all Christian men writing about the Church militant in such a way as to stir the hearts of other Christian men, to take action, to put on the full armor of God, to fight the good fight, to follow Christ into battle and victory.

They have one more thing in common. None of them is to be found in Gather, Glory and Praise, or the last two editions of Worship, the most frequently used collections of hymns in Catholic churches in the United States. (Read more.)